


for the right reasons

by vanillafireworks



Category: The Bachelorette (TV), To All the Boys I've Loved Before Series - Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama & Romance, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Reality TV, Sort Of, how 2 tag??, lil bit, the bachelor - Freeform, the letters never happened!!!, we tryna b funny out here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21628804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafireworks/pseuds/vanillafireworks
Summary: "It's one guy and thirty girls," Lara Jean splutters, "how is that supposed to end well for me?""Well," Kitty says primly, "I thought one chance at a fiance was better than zero chance at a boyfriend. So at the very least, I'm improving on your current odds."(In which Peter Kavinsky is the Bachelor, and Kitty has taken charge of her sister's love life...)
Relationships: Peter Kavinsky/Lara Jean Song-Covey
Comments: 43
Kudos: 148





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i am very sorry but also not at all. good day. i blame three days of spotty WiFi for this little monster

The Bachelor subreddit* is mildly curious when she is found, amongst a gaggle of Southern blondes, in the newest cast photos for the upcoming Season 25 of The Bachelor. Lara Jean (24, from Virginia Beach, VA) is giving the camera a canned smile and wearing the standard issue white v-neck and jeans with clear discomfort, like she’d rather be wearing literally anything else. Her occupation reads “Professional baker.”

  
“Is that an actual job,” u/johnambrose4bachelor muses to the tune of 32 upvotes, “or did producers just hear she baked a cake once?” u/teamtylerandhannah takes this as cue for some classic internet sleuthing. Within an hour, a post, aptly titled **She has a job!** , surfaces. It contains a screenshot from the official Instagram account of Bakery by the Beach, a creatively named chain of bakeries based in Virginia Beach. One of the bakery’s posts is a picture of Lara Jean, wearing a peach-pink apron and a sheepish smile, carefully placing an assortment of macaroons into a teal box. The caption reads: “Our head baker @ljsongcovey hard at work making sure only the best reaches our customers! She’s single, gents!”

  
The subreddit notes, with approval, that @ljsongcovey is a private account with a measly 743 followers. “She’s obviously not one of those influencers just trying to gain followers, and she has a real job! So refreshing. Rooting for her to go far this season,” u/glitterpuffs comments.

u/jimandpam, however, is a little less optimistic, noting: “I give her up till the second group date, tops. She’s cute and normal, so obviously not Peter’s type.” “Yeah,” u/seanandcatherine comments, “she might’ve gone far on a John Ambrose season, but we got Peter, and he is for sure picking one of those blonde influencer types. Like, Genevieve from MA is making hometowns at least.”

Soon, the Bachelor subreddit comes to a rare consensus. Lara Jean Song-Covey is pretty cute, but it’s unlikely she’ll make a dent in the competition. Peter Kavinsky is the former lacrosse superstar who came in third on yet another blonde pageant queen’s season of the Bachelorette, and prior to his announcement as Bachelor, he’d made a brief appearance on Bachelor in Paradise, where he had a brief fling with the other blonde pageant queen. Peter Kavinsky is all about the pomp: realistically, he just isn't going to pay much attention to the unassuming baker with 700 Insta followers.

So, after the initial buzz that always surrounds the few Asian contestants that get cast on the show, talk about Lara Jean dwindles down to silence. After all, one of Peter's girls--gasp!--has already been revealed to have dumped a boyfriend the _day_ before filming started.

* "an online community created to "discuss the ABC show The Bachelor and Bachelor Franchise shows"

* * *

"It was Kitty!" Lara Jean shrieks, the moment Margot's face pops up on her laptop screen. "She sent in my photos, I had no idea until I got an email from some producer that said, _congrats, come to LA for the final round of casting_ , I swear, kill _her_ , not me--" 

"I'm right here, Lara Jean," Kitty notes from beside her, largely unperturbed by the prospect of death. The two girls are sitting on a couch in the living room, hunched over Lara Jean's laptop. 

Through the screen, Lara Jean can see Margot squinting at her banshee of a sister. "That's all good to know," the oldest Covey sister replies placidly, "but what I really want to know is, why did I have to find out from a work friend's screenshot of a Hollywood Reporter article?" 

"It was too embarrassing! No one but Kitty knows, not even my work friends." The 

"Kitty's been watching that show too much," Lara Jean grouches. "At this point I'd rather she binge The Sopranos a fifth time." 

"I don't merely _watch_ the Bachelor, Lara Jean," Kitty notes pompously, crinkling her nose. "I am a scholar of The Bachelor Cinematic Universe. I watch the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise. I keep up with Lauren Zima's recaps, all the podcasts, _and_ regularly post to the subreddit with in-depth body-language analyses after episodes." 

"Vassar has _got_ to kick you out after that sentence." 

"To affect change in society," Kitty declares pompously, "one does not look away from the cancers that plague us. I've chosen, nobly to look closer. Doesn't make me less of a feminist." 

Lara Jean glowers in silence. Kitty shrugs, indifferent to her sister's anger. "And, you know--shit's funny." 

"There's an eloquent way to end your honors thesis," Lara Jean snorts. 

Margot, who up till this point has been observing her sisters' bickering with a well-practiced exasperation, leans forward and sighs. "Lara Jean." 

"Yes?"

"You can rage at Kitty all you want, but she couldn't have forced you to fly all the way out to LA. Don't you think maybe--just maybe--there's a part of you that actually wants to try this out?” 

Lara Jean snorts. "I mean, it's one guy and thirty girls, how is that supposed to end well for me?" 

"Well," Kitty interrupts primly, "I thought one chance at a fiance was better than zero chance at a boyfriend. So at the very least, I'm improving on your current odds." 

"I don't have _zero_ chance at a boyfriend!" 

"Really," Kitty says, grinning. "Because you never went out or met anyone new in high school _or_ college, and you don't until now either. I'd say zero is a generous estimate." 

Lara Jean is quiet. Kitty, unfortunately, isn't entirely wrong--Lara Jean had coasted through high school pretty quietly, sticking with her best friend Lucas and generally keeping her head down. It had been largely uneventful, save for when she had caught a young Kitty attempting to send out her teal box love letters (fortunately, she had nipped that in the bud before it could happen.) College had been the same, too--UVA had been so close to home, and she'd visited home so often she might as well have gone to a commuter school. 

Margot senses that Kitty's remark has cut a little deeper than it should have, and moves to comfort her sister. "I think what Kitty means," Margot says kindly, "is that it sounds like a really good experience to get you out of your shell. And at worst, you'll get a little publicity for the bakery, right?" 

"I guess,” Lara Jean grouses. 

Kitty smiles and squeezes her sister's hand. Mission accomplished. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for making it to the end of this--hit me w/ comments babeyy


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello reader, some Emotional Grounding (TM) before we get into the shenanigans of next chapter...

Peter Grant Kavinsky (25, Portland, OR) was a star the moment he stepped out of the limo to meet the Bachelorette, first to go like the producers already knew he was going to be the man of the season. He doesn’t pull any gimmicks, just wears a navy-blue tux and an easy smile. He says, “Hi, I’m Peter,” tells her she looks beautiful, and shakes her hand with both hands clasped around hers. “I’ll see you soon,” he says, grinning.

Once he’s left, the Bachelorette realizes he’s left a small note in her palm. In careful handwriting, it says: “I was hoping it would be you.” She giggles in spite of herself, and tells Chris Harrison, “I feel like I’m in high school all over again.” And once Peter Kavinsky’s limo entrance aired, so did the rest of the world. 

Peter gets the First Impression Rose that night, then proceeds to sail through the first half of the season. He avoids the petty drama that drags down the barely-contending contenders. He strikes up an endlessly charming bromance with fellow frontrunner John Ambrose McClaren. On his one-on-time, he asks the Bachelorette sincere questions about who she is and what she wants to do, and enthusiastically makes out with her in hot tubs, making all of America collectively blush.

On his one-on-one date, he talks about the debilitating injury that took him out of UVA lacrosse his senior fall and shifted his entire life plan. He speaks fondly about the inner-city Richmond kids he now coaches, how he hopes lacrosse will do the same things for them that it did for him. The Communications degree he haphazardly got between lacrosse practice became a stepping stone to law school, which he graduated from a few months before The Bachelorette’s casting call came along.

“My buddies applied for me as a joke,” he says bashfully, “but once I knew I had a chance, I just kind of decided to go all in and try to get on. This is my mom’s favorite show, and it means a lot to her that I’m here. She’s always been worried I won’t have time to settle down, and she doesn’t want me to be alone. I don’t either—I wanna be happy, for her.”

As it turns out, his mother knows very well what it’s like to be alone. Peter admits it to her for the first time, right before they walk through the door of his home for his hometown date: when he was sixteen, his father left their family to start a new one with another woman. After that, Mr. Kavinsky was an absent father, at best. 

Predictably, producers have made sure that Mr. Kavinsky is present that night. Peter is stoically silent the whole time. 

The Bachelorette takes Mr. Kavinsky aside after dinner, and he insists Peter’s side isn’t the whole story. Ever since Peter’s high school graduation, he’s been fiercely protective of his mother and little brother, Owen. Peter has refused to invite his father to birthday parties, celebrations, or graduations for almost six years. 

“I think,” the Bachelorette says gently to Peter after their date, “that maybe you could stand to let your father into your life a little bit more. He loves you.” 

“Let him in for what?” Peter lashes out, immediately. “So he can walk right back out?” 

She flinches, like she’s been slapped. 

“That wasn’t your place,” Peter tells her through gritted teeth. Wasn’t her place to talk to his father or to say what she’d said to Peter, he doesn’t say. He refuses to speak any more on the subject afterwards. 

She keeps him on the show longer than she should have after that date; she did have a soft spot for him. They spend their Fantasy Suite date walking the streets of Prague, and it’s lighthearted and sweet, although it all has an air of finality to it. That night, she takes him aside before they can spend the night at the Fantasy Suite. 

“I think you could have been it,” she says sadly, “but you’re not ready. I think a part of your heart is still a little closed off… like it’s scared to be broken.” 

She kisses him, long and hard, before he disappears into the limo.

* * *

Sure, Lara Jean had always loved fairytales and great romances—her sisters had always known that. Still, so what if she never found her fairytale love? At college, for the first time, she felt fully at peace with that possibility: she made good grades in a major she loved, led the Korean Student Association, made significant bank selling her pastries around campus, and had a modest handful of friends she loved and admired. Prince Charming came in fragments—in brief glimmers and fleeting qualities across the few boys she might have loved, if only things had gone right, instead of the many mundane ways they’d gone wrong. 

Most of the time, Lara Jean was too busy to mind—except once, really.

They’d met at some fraternity party, and he’d DMed her on Instagram with blistering sincerity, as if he were writing a love letter instead of performing the most time-worn step of the millennial romantic playbook. He was Korean, he’d grown up in Richmond, and he made her laugh. She liked him despite her best instincts—he was the kind of boy she’d never really believed would look at her in that way.

They spent a month sneaking in and out of rooms and basements and getting lunch between classes. He helped her clean up after KSA events, and double-texted her to make sure they were still on for whatever frat party or picnic trip he’d invited her to that week. Still, in classic college fashion, they never put a label on things, and Lara Jean had convinced herself that she didn’t need to ask.

So she stayed in that limbo, that place of unsureness, until she couldn’t.

“Why do you like me?” She asks him abruptly one night, just as he’s about to walk back to his own room.

She’d seen him having lunch at Alderman with some sunkissed blonde who had the same easy smile he did, the kind of smile you got when things always came true for you. She could’ve asked him about it, but the words are caught in her throat—she’s not sure she’s ready for the answer.

“Lots of reasons,” he replies. There it is again, Lara Jean thinks: that painfully easy smile.

She’s unperturbed. “If it had been some other girl at that party, would it have been her sitting here instead of me?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Why does that matter?”

“Because.” A pause. Then Lara Jean summons what feels like all her courage: “Are we together?”

“Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know,” she hedges. “What do you want?” 

“I asked you first, Lara Jean.”

“I don’t know,” she repeats, helplessly. Too scared to ask, too scared to be shut down.

He sighs then, and kisses her long and hard before saying goodbye. When he doesn’t text her afterwards for two days, she quietly blocks his number on her phone. She doesn’t want to know for sure that she’d been rejected. Maybe he’d really decided she wasn’t good enough for him, maybe he’d texted the next week, sorry and scared but willing to try. She’ll never know. 

Three summers later, Lara Jean watches Peter’s Bachelorette journey unfold over Hulu, at Kitty’s aggressive behest. They need some intentional, scheduled bonding, Kitty insists, now that they’re older and don’t live together most of the year.

So Lara Jean watches Peter Kavinsky endure objectifying group dates and choreographed drama. She watches him start to fall in love, and then see the possibility be stripped away. 

“I think she’s right,” Peter murmurs to himself in the back of the limo, fresh from being booted off the show. Lara Jean thinks he sounds exhausted, like the words are being pried out of him. “I’m scared, alright? I wish—like, if things could just go right, I know I can do it. I know I can love so well and so hard. I just gotta stop being scared. I know I can get there.”

“Gotta say,” Kitty notes, “he really nailed his Bachelor audition.”

Lara Jean shakes her head. “No,” she says, “he really means it. I know it.”

Kitty raises an eyebrow at her sister—Lara Jean has never been invested in reality TV the way Kitty is. She remembers this conversation a few weeks later, when ABC announces they’re beginning casting for the new season of The Bachelor.

* * *

After the hundred-item questionnaires that cover everything from sexual health to dream jobs, the million audition tapes and the flights to LA, the last stage of the casting process is jarringly simple.

Lara Jean walks into a small studio, where just one producer and a cameraman await.

He asks her one question: “What is it that you want? From all this?”

Lara Jean pauses. She thinks about all the words she’s let die in her throat, and she thinks of Anna Kendrick in The Last Five Years, singing joyfully despite the impending heartbreak: _I open myself, I open myself/ one stitch at a time._ She never did outgrow romcoms... 

“The possibility of a fairytale,” she replies, smiling a little. “And if not, at least the strength to go after it.”

She thinks she sees the producer crack a smile.

(Two weeks later, she gets an email telling her to pack three suitcases of cocktail dresses and to file for leave at the bakery. Lara Jean Song Covey was going to be on The Bachelor.)

\----------

**Preview of Chapter 3: Night One**

_“Alright, imbeciles, it’s premiere night! Give me hot girls. Give me crying girls. Give me crazy girls. Give me the blossoming of true love and at least one catfight. Remember, cash bonus goes to anyone who gets a girl to—”_

_The voice from the walkie-talkie crackles abruptly into silence. Andrea, the producer who’s just turned off the walkie talkie, fixes Lara Jean with a look that is partly apologetic, mostly terrified. “Our executive producer likes to kid around,” she tells Lara Jean, laughing nervously. “You get it.”_

_“Yeah,” Lara Jean attempts, “of course.”_

_“So,” Andrea says halfheartedly, “you excited to meet Peter?” She’s very unsubtly plugging a pair of headphones into the walkie—Lara Jean can still hear the executive producer’s muffled voice shrieking into Andrea's ear._

_Lara Jean nods mutely and grips onto the hem of her dress for dear life. Would that this dress were a time dress..._

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Pardon the moderate retconning of LJ’s college experience and the slightly different tone, but truly no real brain cells went into the first chapter, just pure Dumb Bitch Audacity, so some course-correcting was needed lol. Dumb Bitch Audacity is returning for sure tho!! 
> 
> \- Either way, let me know what you think in the comments! :)
> 
> \- Also, the Bachelor casting process is not nearly as simple as I make it out to be, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1UYrqmkA_Y


End file.
